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Wei-Hock Soon is accused of failing to disclose funding from corporations in his research. We don’t seem to know if the funding was for any of the research but to the left-wing climate radicals, that doesn’t really matter.

This isn’t about climate folks. This never was. It is about politics and enacting a totalitarian style socialist government with the same faux democracy you see in China and North Korea. It is an openly visible government plot to gain ever more power. Driven by bureaucrats personally incentivized by the massive money and power government offers. It IS LED by liberal “progressive” Democrats and it is leading to a very bad place. Unfortunately, no political party is immune from power and the two primary parties we get to pick from are just different rates of change in the same very bad direction. Don’t believe me, then you need to learn your history better. You have been duped.

We are losing our freedoms in America at a massive rate, the internet just took a huge and completely unnecessary blow today. The unelected portion of the government gave itself the power to tax, regulate, limit and redistribute internet access. How long until we find preferred content getting favorable treatment. No Jeff, that would be illegal! If you think like that, you are again wrong… ever hear of the IRS. Are you really naive enough to believe that tax laws aren’t used as a political weapon? —I doubt it. Americans have no clue how much of their own medical freedoms they have just lost either, and it will be decades before they really figure it out. The massive tax increases which were finally enacted last year are already having a huge impact on businesses and employment. I have personal experience with that particular impact. Not that people care about business when the government adjusts the government employment performance numbers to hide their failure.

So illegal aliens being converted to automatic citizens while leaving the border open. Does anyone really believe that is for anything except automatic votes? Free social security, medicaid and health care for them. How about the new push to have 16 and 17 year olds vote? That shouldn’t tweak the numbers in the liberals favor should it? It is about power and votes and guaranteed continuation of both…. nothing else. Hmmm.. I recall hearing about that same sort of voting system in some other country?..

I’ve been personally attacked in two left-wing psychology papers in journals because liberals don’t like that I speak out against the lies of climate science, and they obviously fear me (and you). There is no other reason to call out my name and imply some sort of delusional personality disorder to me. It is these same selfish, self-serving progressives who are doing it for the money. NO business organization would pay multiple millions of dollars for poor class of work created by Michael Mann or Lewandowsky. In the GOVERNMENT funded world, their mathmagical masturbation can be held up as the best in class, published in the compliant left-wing media and distributed as fact to increase law and regulations by government organizations. To government employees, that sort of nonsense actually has a real value!

Literally hundreds of billions of dollars in government money is funneled to left-wing extremists posing as scientists. The money doesn’t change their minds, the “scientists” were already that biased, many were already willing to lie or exaggerate for the “cause”. These are the people who get preferentially paid over their now nearly extinct colleagues who won’t repeat the complete bovine scatology that climate models are somehow working. Or somehow models haven’t badly overstated the climate sensitivity to CO2 (as several fake papers have tried to claim), or the ridiculous claims of more extreme weather which has been recorded EXACTLY NOWHERE ON THE PLANET.

Theses are false unscientific lies published in droves by the IPCC, the EPA, the LIBERAL PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRAT PARTY etc….. The liberals are the ones saddling us with these massive losses of freedom across the board. They are the ones twisting every law for purposes of guaranteed election wins. They are the ones attempting to prevent funding of any group which doesn’t promote increased government control of every aspect of our lives. They are the ones poisoning our population with unhireable moronic dependents who drop out of highschool and will never do anything except collect government checks and stay home — until its time to vote democratic. Seriously, have you ever hired an employee that can’t read? I’ve tried. He made it a few weeks too.

EPA,FCC,IRS,ATF,IPCC,WHO,etc… on and on and on.. Hundreds of billions of tax dollars, stolen from industry and handed over to corrupt liberals. That is who is doing this, and NO that doesn’t make the conservatives clean, but it does make them better than the other guy.

How may of those corrupt, fraudulent, left-wing extremist scientists disclosed their obvious conflicts of interest in receiving government money when publishing their fake work? How many disclosed their side business money, because it seems pretty clear from basic research that near half receive side money for speaking on climate, conferences, personal green business ventures, etc… Not nearly as many as should disclose, that’s for sure.

The government money is creating and empowering the fraud — INTENTIONALLY! This is not an accident. The purpose of the climate science exaggerations from the government perspective, is reduced freedom and increased government power. That is the value of the exaggerations on climate, and that is what we are being taxed for. There is nothing else in climate science that you really need to know.

So YES I’m pissed off about the Soon thing or investigations of Pielke, Spencer or Curry. It is a blatant left-wing political attempt to prevent them from receiving any funding at all by marginalizing companies who would contribute. To put fear in the hearts of their employers and chill any dissent to their pro-regulation plans. And in the case of Peilke Sr., stunts like this have worked and he is not publishing anything in climate anymore.

We are in big, big trouble as a country, as the damage the progressive liberals are doing in centralizing all control is nearly irreversible barring a major civil war. I fear for our children and grandchildren. My international readers shouldn’t take it as some kind of American hubris when I point out that the loss of American freedom is a very bad thing for the rest of the world.

It is an ugly place when universally left-wing government officials with no personal skin in the game make decisions about every aspect of our lives. We will see soon enough and hopefully we will still be smart enough to figure out what happened. I would write that if you are voting for these people it’s time to wake up but really it is already way too late for that. We are already on that rollercoaster and the car has left the gate.

How can you start an anonymous blog, writing on a topic of science, with near zero advertising and expect to have any readers. Seriously, the first article I wrote here had like 9 views in 24 hours! The unlikely visitors were probably looking for furnace vents or something. It hardly justified the time put into writing but everyone has an opinion so better out than in right…. Well this is a lot of years later and after some time this blog was blessed with a lot of readers. As Paul Matthews paper demonstrates, the readership here was far from an average slice of the population. The comment level was so high on this (and other skeptic blogs), that I started a reader background thread to capture the social profile of what is happening. It quickly became one of my favorite threads here and I put a permanent link to it at the top of the page. Reader Paul Matthews found the thread interesting enough that he has written — and published — a journal article describing distribution of the skeptical blog community and unsurprisingly to those who have traversed these pages, it is comprised of a group of highly educated and extremely scientific individuals.

Leiserowitz (2012) that worldview and political ideology are minor factors.

..

This emphasis on scientific details is to be expected given the scientific focus of this

particular blog and the high level of scientific and technical background of the commenters,

noted in the previous section. In this regard, the blog is typical: a survey of climate sceptic

blogs found that the most prominent of these generally tend to concentrate on scientific

aspects of the climate debate (Sharman, 2013)

I couldn’t agree more that the skeptical climate blogs are typically very high science content. This is true even in comparison to the AGW advocacy groups like the ironically named “skeptical science”. While tAV readers of the past and present are my personal favorites ;), the concept Paul Matthews expresses of high education and limited bias holds true across most skeptic blogs. The Blackboard, Climate Audit, Tallbloke, Judith Curry, WUWT, Lubos Motl’, Brandon Shollenberger, Trees for the Forest, Jo Nova, on and on and on….. The readership and authorship is educated and intelligent far beyond what is generally portrayed in media. The reality is that the threads of these blogs often contain as much or more information than the posts.

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I was very much surprised to see a publication on the Air Vent thread, (at least one which doesn’t involve accusations of a nonsense conspiracy theory) and am especially pleased to see the recognition of quality of the readership here and skeptical blogs in general. As the article notes, the Air Vent has seen better days. It leaves me longing for the old days when our company was smaller and I had more time for serious climate study. The recognition of the readership of these blogs is the real story and that is well past due.

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Congratulations to Paul Matthews et al. and even more to the general open-minded climate community.

The “Union of Concerned Scientists” posts this message on its front page…….

Global warming is already having significant and harmful effects on our communities, our health, and our climate. Sea level rise is accelerating. The number of large wildfires is growing. Dangerous heat waves are becoming more common. Extreme storm events are increasing in many areas. More severe droughts are occurring in others.

We must take immediate action to address global warming or these consequences will continue to intensify, grow ever more costly, and increasingly affect the entire planet—including you, your community, and your family.

The good news is that we have the practical solutions at hand to dramatically reduce our carbon emissions, slow the pace of global warming, and pass on a healthier, safer world to future generations.

With your help, we can accomplish it.

Together, we can tackle global warming.

Now I am getting old… well is 45 old yet? …. maybe not but anyway it is older than I was yesterday and I can recall a time when I really believed that nobody and by ‘nobody’ I mean nobody in their right mind, would fall for the insane claims made by global warming “science”. They are really extreme claims. Well the were extreme claims until we had our heads saturated with propaganda from a 100 billion dollar industry. Now they are commonplace. Seriously folks, space science is expensive. Nasa is huge still, the US air force space program is huge, but we spend multiples of that space funding on global warming….. The money is hidden in so many corners that every time I’ve gotten started evaluating funding, I cannot begin to track it. The money supporting global warming alarmism is so massive, and so prevalent, that it would take millions of dollars simply to document it.

And every single penny is being spent for left-wing political causes.

You can’t count it. It is too big. You can’t even imagine all of it, because it doesn’t stop.

It is spent in droves on fake and fraudulent scientific study. It is spent on activism, meetings, travel, hotels, fake energy generation, advertising, vehicles, scientific conferences, equipment, computer centers, political campaigns and every conceivable method of self promotion imagined by anyone who ever considered the subject. The money is endless, as it is government money.

So then we have a group of alleged scientists. A union say, of concerned ones, who believe in an enlightened future for humanity. A future with no CO2 emission, a high fruit and vegetable diet, limited or no nuclear power generation, and fake energy solutions such as biofuel and wind for our future power needs. All based on unscientific reactionism and good feelings. Science does not support much of their conclusion, yet they are a union of concerned scientists and they are happy to conclude for us BUT the conclusions don’t match observation……..

That leaves me concerned.

How is it that so many scientists can gather together and sign their names to unscientific beliefs. The problem is so bad that you can find more scientific fact in a Mosque than you can in the opening quote above.

In fact, this world is so perverted that the Catholic religion is more grounded in science than the Union of Concerned Scientists……..and the Union of Concerned Scientists has greater faith. Shocking..no? Why can I claim their faith is greater than the Catholic religion? Because unlike religion, their claims are demonstrably false. Not moderately tweaked, or potentially subject to interpretation, demonstrably false!

Talk about an inverted perverted, yes is no, right is wrong world………. yet it is our world. You can dissemble every page of the UCS website and will find little beyond political conclusion, but this is ostensibly a climate blog so let’s just look at the climate change claims on the front page of UCS to examine the claims above.

FACT: Main stream science holds that current global warming is minimal and difficult to measure by ground stations or even with modern satellite equipment. No attributable trends of any sort on communities, health, and extreme climate events have been positively attributed to temperature change.

Sea level rise is accelerating.

FACT: Sea level rise has been going on for centuries. It has not measurably accelerated, and increases in sea level may have recently reduced. The rate of change in sea level rise has not been successfully correlated to the very mild warming that thousands of land temperature stations have measured. Don’t believe it, check this wikipedia link.

The number of large wildfires is growing.

Now why this particular bit of nonsense would be attached to “climate change” is beyond reasonable, yet it is the third sentence in a 27 million dollar company’s global warming website. Shouldn’t we consider forest management as a primary driver before 0.8 degrees of warming? Shouldn’t we also consider the increased amount of forest we currently have, the lack of allowing smaller fires to occur, or what about the simple fact that 80 years ago we let forests burn without significant documentation. What does that do to the data. Well….. then there is the data.

It found no trend of increasing fire severity in the Sierra Nevada management region in California over the past three decades. In fact, the study found that between 1984 and 2010, the amount of high-severity fire in the Sierra was lower than its natural level, before modern fire suppression.

An unscientific conclusion from the Union of Concerned Scientists? There are plenty of other papers which support this individual conclusion. We shouldn’t be surprised either as the concept that 0.8C would measurably increase “fires” is ludicrous on the face of it.

Dangerous heat waves are becoming more common.

Now you would think that someone like myself who believes in the warming effect of CO2, that I might be inclined to agree with this one. But heat waves are extreme weather events, not long term offsets from the mean temperature, and this claim is as bogus as the others. From the scientifically outrageous left-wing United States EPA —- heat waves.

Heat waves occurred with high frequency in the 1930s, and these remain the most severe heat waves in the U.S. historical record(see Figure 1). Many years of intense drought (the “Dust Bowl”) contributed to these heat waves by depleting soil moisture and reducing the moderating effects of evaporation.

This EPA statement is followed up with claims of increasing heat waves in recent years but still much less than in the pre-global warming years. The key here is again — attribution. If you cannot attribute heat waves to CO2 emission, you cannot get funding and you cannot make the claim that CO2 is causing heat waves. Nobody in science has been able to associate increased heat waves with CO2 based climate change. It doesn’t stop science from making the claim though does it?

Extreme storm events are increasing in many areas. More severe droughts are occurring in others.

Now look at the prevarication in this beauty of a statement. I can’t argue that extreme storms and droughts haven’t increased in “many areas” because I would have to check all of the areas. Scientifically and statistically, this statement is impossible to contradict. However…….it is GLOBAL WARMING…. we are supposed to be worried about right? The IPCC has warned that warming across the globe causes increased storms and droughts. YET again, the facts contradict the “scientists” claims.

More realistic calculations, based on the underlying physical principles8 that take into account changes in available energy, humidity and wind speed, suggest that there has been little change in drought over the past 60 years.

Now to be fair, there are literally thousands of pro-drought papers primarily based on models. Droughts are scary and a good indicator of regional financial impact. They make good headlines, yet like forest fires, there isn’t any observational data supporting a true link between drought and the mild global warming. Here is an example for Illinois:

Tropical cyclone accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) has exhibited strikingly large global interannual variability during the past 40‐years. In the pentad since 2006, Northern Hemisphere and global tropical cyclone ACE has decreased dramatically to the lowest levels since the late 1970s. Additionally, the global frequency of tropical cyclones has reached a historical low. Here evidence is presented demonstrating that considerable variability in tropical cyclone ACE is associated with the evolution of the character of observed large‐scale climate mechanisms including the El Niño Southern Oscillation and Pacific Decadal Oscillation. In contrast to record quiet North Pacific tropical cyclone activity in 2010, the North Atlantic basin remained very active by contributing almost one‐third of the overall calendar year global ACE.

So that is just the first paragraph. Not the whole thing but every sentence in the first paragraph on climate change from the union of concerned scientists is false information. My conclusion, and probably yours…… THESE ARE NOT SCIENTISTS.

I can continue with the rest of the next statements, but I don’t have enough time to contradict every paid moron on the planet. These people have a 27 plus million dollar annual budget, and unlike a simple business owner like myself, they have near zero cost for that budget. No real overhead and over 90% profit at zero tax. Their resources are equivalent to a functional and profitable 300 million dollar company (my estimate). Their product is climate alarmism. Yet they claim to be simple scientists who work the table as a side job. Make no mistake by their claims of unbiased scientific understanding, these people are most certainly swayed by the cash.

Now there are still plenty of left-leaning readers still who harbor all kinds of screwed up anti-common sense beliefs about society, taxes and fairness. I ask the following question: If the director of UCS woke up tomorrow and realized, as we all should, that the climate change branch of their organization was bunk, does anyone imagine that she would recommend any change in their public position?

If I woke up tomorrow and observations contradicted my conclusions, I absolutely would change my opinion. Unfortunately, or fortunately for most of us here, our opinions are based on science rather than the money colored faith of the “greens” and our beliefs are influenced by observation. With organizations like this, sweeping things like Climategate under the rug is a priority, sweeping failed climate models under the rug is an emergency.

Watch for it, today climate models are the next climate gate. They have to go as badly as the hockey stick.

The director of the Union for Concerned Scientists is waking up to the exact nightmare scenario that their company cannot absorb… Climate models have failed.

‘Twill be interesting over the next few years to see the response. Don’t get too excited though, killing a company that large isn’t something which can happen overnight and the UCS is a teenie-tiny branch of the whole Medusa. My certainty on this aspect is so great that I don’t believe the global warming industry would be killed by a full-fledged ice age. It would morph, but the seven headed beast would live on.

I just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. From a climate perspective, the year couldn’t have been more uneventful. Nothing new from the advocates, nothing new from Gaia’s actual climate, no new admissions from climate modelers…

All I want for Christmas is a reasonable climate model..

A reasonable climate model

A reasonable climate model

All I want for Christmas is….

Anyway, I’m having a wonderful time with the boys. We chucked a ball up and down the stairs for an hour and played with an old slot car set I had for another hour. Looking forward to tomorrow.

In addition to the obvious and massive benefits that increased CO2 brings to chlorophyll based life on this planet, I actually am beginning to wish CO2 warming was a stronger effect. It would likely be better for us in the long run if it were.

Needless to say, I won’t be around to release moderated comments for Doug’s thread after tomorrow. Who knows what will happen this year! Either way, I’m gone to the northwoods Wednesday to have a much needed rest.

I do miss serious blogging, and have been working on some neat technical stuff in the background but it isn’t ready yet.

I probably will always enjoy the back-and-forth considered blog posts. Nobody ever wins, but they are diverting. This is from a previous thread.

Glenn Tamblyin wrote:

Jeff

“Glenn, the IPCC is hardly an unbiased reporting agency. Certainly we can all agree on that!”

Depends what you mean by biased Jeff.

Is there a bis towards downplaying some aspects of the risks of AGW. Yes. That is clearly evident when one sees the process by which the full report produced by the scientists is then ‘negotiated over’ by the national representatives to produce the final SPM. Case in point with AR5 was the removal of some key references to a maximum Carbon Budget to remain below 2 Deg C of warming. Some governments at least want to downplay AGW because it is something they don’t want to have to deal with politically or economically.

Is there natural human bias? Of course there is. Every individual is subject to that. But individuals biases tend to cancel out when large numbers of people from diverse backgrounds, nationalities, cultures, demographic all look at the same question.And scietists are the most skeptical people in the world. It’s not like herding cats. More like herding alley-cats. When large numbers of scientists agree on something, having thrown every dart they can at it to try and burst the balloon, then the world really should sit up and take notice. What is the point of having experts if we won’t listen to them?

Some folks, perhaps including you, seem to think there is some sort of an agenda. That scientists are dancing to someone elses tune. Actually it is the opposite. Scientists have been slowly getting louder and louder in their warnings to government about the risks they see. Next year is the 50’th anniversary of the first, then low key, official warning from the scientists about the risk increased CO2 might pose. They have spent that half century, through 2-3 generations of scientists, trying to alert the world to the problem. Getting slowly and steadily louder as the world hasn’t listened. ‘houston, we might have a problem’…’houston, we really think there might be a problem’…’Houston, we really really think you need to look into this’… ‘Houston. Are You There?’…’HOUSTON WAKE UP’
And slowly, screaming and kicking, most governments have been dragged to a reluctant acceptance of this.

Consider something Jeff. Governments come and go. Left-Right-Left-Right…. Different countries. But there is not one National Academy of Science anywhere in the world with a position against it. Not one peak professional body against it. Not one Defense Force – the ultimate in hard-nosed thinkers. The Pentagon accepts it – hardly surprising since they were behind much of the research in the 50’s & 60’s that laid the foundations for understanding it.

Yet the message from the scientists hasn’t changed for decades. If there is an ‘agenda’ from government for example that is driving this then wouldn’t the message from the scientists blow with the wind -at least the winds of the electoral cycle – and supposedly what is coming from their ‘paymasters’.

Could the scientists have an agenda? Of course they do. The TRUTH – there, some words in nice big capital letters. What do I mean by that? Scientists are motivated by a deep desire to be right. To discover something and get it right. No matter how diligent a scientist’s career was, if they routinely backed incorrect ideas they don’t get the status, kudos, the simple ego-trip. Science doesn’t pay that well as a career for the amount of work you have to put in but there is the potential real pay-off. ‘I’m the guy who discovered X’. That s their motive, their agenda. Nothing noble about it, pure self-interest like the rest of us. They do science because they like love finding out stuff – and getting credit for that. If they wanted serious money they certainly wouldn’t pick science. Nor if they wanted fame among the general public they wouldn’t pick a field that most people don’t understand, value or are interested in.

So why wouldn’t they just try to convince people they did discover something, even if it isn’t true? History is full of the victor’s version of events, not truth. Why wouldn’t the scientists take the same tack? Because in science history isn’t written by people; its written by the Laws of Physics. You might convince a trillion people you are right but the Laws of Physics have right-of-veto; they determine history and a scientist’s reputation, not people. Convince people of something that isn’t true and your fame will be short lived and hollow – Physics will out. And all your fellow scientists will be champing at the bit to prove you wrong if they can.

Apart from a few wishful thinkers, scientists know that just convincing people doesn’t count for much. Being right is what counts. So ideas of vast conspiracies, group-think etc just don’t wash. Only an idiot would think you can con the Laws of Physics and get away with it. And scientists aren’t idiots.

And who are the people for whom acceptance is hardest, who are most reluctant to accept the evidence, in and out of government? Those for whom the consequences of AGW and the sorts of actions needed to address it are hardest to swallow. Just ask yourself how many of these items tick boxes for you Jeff? How many of these things resonate with you as negatives?

– Action to tackle this requires coordinated global action. It requires cooperation between nations with the strong helping the weak.
– It requires regulation of a whole range of activities in life.
– It requires that within our societies we act cooperatively, working together.
– It requires that we have sufficient trust in our fellow humans, in government, scientists etc to accept that most of them are acting decently enough most of the time.
– It requires changes that may require economic costs
– It means that the way we live our lives has had negative impacts. That we can’t have a completely positive, ‘we are the greatest’ view of what we have done.
– It requires that we accept that a sense of boundlessness that has been a central part of our cultures, particularly in the ‘frontier nations’ such as the USA or Australia is ending – from here on in human society has to have values centered on limitations and boundedness.
– That as individuals we may need to curtail some of the exercise of our freedoms for the common good.
– That our sense of man’s dominion over the earth (perhaps coming from a religious origin) is misplaced; we are simply one part of that earth and we prosper best when we work with the limits of our role rather than against it.
– That we may have spent our entire working lives contributing to building a society and an economy that turns out to have some significant flaws and is in need of at least some degree of redesign because currently it is dysfunctional; our prosperity has been obtained through a flawed system and we need to accept that, unwittingly, not all our actions have been good.
– That our view that we are so insignificant a force on the earth that what we do doesn’t matter is now wrong; the growth in our numbers and technologies means we have the power to cause vast changes on the earth and we have done – some of them negative ones. Humanity is now a geological force and we must act with extreme care now or we can cause great harm, to ourselves particularly.
– That any God we may believe in (if you happen to be religious) will not intervene; that we are capable and allowed to wreak damage upon ourselves and said God won’t lift a finger.
– That our ideas about how to build prosperity and well being, whether for ourselves or our communities, may have been flawed. That we might have to admit we, unwittingly, have made mistakes.

For me Jeff, none of these points (and one can imagine more than this) are difficult or problematic to accept. None of those statements say anything terrible, disturbing or deeply offensive about us; admitting we might have made mistakes or made bad judgements isn’t problematic, That’s just us being human. If we need to live life with a pollyanna, ‘we are so good’ view of ourselves then that is just a character flaw we have. In reality each of us is a mixture of strengths and weaknesses. And accepting that is perfectly alright. Quite simply, we are human. We fuck up sometimes. And not being able to admit we have fucked up is also fucking up.

I don’t necessarily think the changes and insights needed will be achievable, but there is nothing I find problematic in principle with any of them Nothing in that lists is something I feel any compulsion to reject..

So what about yourself Jeff? How many of those points get your hackles up?

Here is the point. The Laws of Physics don’t care what our feelings about this are, yours or mine. The Laws of Physics are life-and-death. All our values etc are just our incidental ruminations. If our deepest values, desires and beliefs are out of sync with the Laws of Physics, then the Laws of Physics will stomp on our most treasured ideas with utter disdain.

So who is more likely to be biased Jeff. Someone who is able to accept the implications of what AGW means, as highlighted in my list? Or someone who finds it deeply disturbing to accept that list?

Because all those points, and probably others have absolutely ZERO relevance. The science is what it is, and our values etc don’t count for a tinker’s damn in comparison.

No doubt you will want to disagree with what I have said. Just consider what your disagreement is in the light of how I have framed my comment.

Jeff Id

Glenn,

Thanks for the reply. Things like this make blogging fun.

Of course I have many problems with what you have written but your argument is reasonably well considered although it contains a significant bit of ideological ‘belief’ in your list of points. One thing we do agree on 100% is that the science is the science and this is the world that god (or chance) has given us and nobody is going to come from the sky to tweak it back into shape if we screw it up. I also agree that humans have the power to make change to the world, no big denial surprise there.

Where your scientific argument fails however is in step 1. Climate models have failed….. Completely 100% failed by basic statistical testing. No scientist can rationally state that they have passed even a 30 year test. Yet they just did in a global worldwide report. So we know from that simple validity check, that the IPCC is a biased source of climate information – in the alarmist direction — despite your implications that disagreement with some of the most extreme IPCC conclusions represent the actual bias against science.

It is reasonable to state that the problem with the models is worse than simply exaggerating the warming trend by 2-3 times, they are not explanatory of the difference, so mathematically and scientifically they have little to no predictive scientific value. We don’t have a prediction that we can rely on. Scientifically, we cannot use the models to predict either when or even IF we will see significant warming. Therefore no action is required, necessary, or far more importantly, —- in our best interest.

In addition, we don’t have any evidence that actually warming the planet would present any significant problem either. Hurricanes, droughts, rainfall, etc… none of the alleged dangers have actually been observed. Really that is all that should be required for our scientific discussion. We should all agree that while CO2 does add heat to the system, we don’t know what future temperatures will do, and we can’t observe any significant problems from the bit of warming we have experienced. End of story.

However, that is not what the IPCC is promoting.

IF we still irrationally assume that CO2 IS going to cause significant warming right now, and it IS irrational to assume such as we have no evidence for it, the way to combat CO2 warming is something that is far grayer an area than you have portrayed above. I would make the point that minimal global coordination is necessary and that we have only one technologically functional solution to generate such large quantities of energy. Minimal economic support is required, it may be a net economic gain, and very little regulation or change in lifestyle is needed. We simply agree to switch all new power plant construction to nuclear power and let the old plants run to their natural life cycle. New nuclear plants are safer, cleaner and more effective than the old technology and they continue to improve. We only need to do it in advanced countries that already have nuclear capability as the rest of the world doesn’t emit much in comparison. I will even predict that economically this WILL be the future of humanity whether the government intervenes or not. There are plenty of economic and physics based reasons that this will happen.

So there is your perfect green solution!! Are you on board? I am guessing you are one of the all of the above guys who thinks that 20 bad solutions will add up to one good one. You may also be an extremist and believe that all nuclear power is bad. I don’t mean to be disparaging but a mix of these positions seems to be the all-too-common pseudo-intellectual “compromise” position these days.
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So from your unscientific observation that CO2 warming is going to be dangerous, you make several points on your list which are based on ideology. I find most of them wholly objectionable and very poorly considered. They are heavily socialist in their form and I believe that were we silly enough to adopt the plan as laid out by you, it would lead to global strife the likes of which we have not seen in human history. Of course, socialists in general don’t recognize the need to incentivize individual economic gain as a requirement for human prosperity. They believe simple wealth redistribution solves the problem, and they universally underestimate the harm to industry. It seems that you suffer from this affliction but I don’t know your whole story. What doesn’t make sense, is “Wealthy” functional capitalist governments supplying funds to maintain non-functioning socialist dictatorships. The result of redistribution, whether by country or individual is the same — rich productive people giving money to non-productive ones to “help” them stay with the status quo.

I have always found the argument interesting that we simultaneously say that we must globally help the weak with climate action. Since weak nations with non-functioning socialist/dictatorship style governments produce little of anything, it seems quite a leap to say that we need to do anything for them. They certainly aren’t any geological Greenhouse gas belching force right? Shouldn’t our limited resources be used to tackle producing energy that doesn’t emit CO2. Far more importantly, do we really want to enable those sick non-functional governments to continue creating human misery? With no visible mitigation required as no scientifically observable damage has happened, what would those countries exactly do with the money?

“It requires that we accept that a sense of boundlessness that has been a central part of our cultures, particularly in the ‘frontier nations’ such as the USA or Australia is ending – from here on in human society has to have values centered on limitations and boundedness.”

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Glenn, this one is the worst point of all. Your assumption is that our natural existence won’t curtail our behavior sufficiently. You believe that capitalist free society cannot provide, again like global warming, against all observation to the contrary, and you are ready to stop it now rather than allow it to continue to succeed as it has and should. You have made a great leap of faith here toward a form of central government controlled existence which has already produced more than enough observational evidence of its non-functionality. You are wrong about this and it is the foundation of most of your conclusions. I am thoroughly frightened of this thought process, as it is so prevalent in society, and so observationally wrong, and it leads to such bad places.
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As I have never convinced anyone who strongly believes that capitalism and freedom don’t functionally govern of anything to the contrary, I don’t expect you will agree with what I am writing. However, I will agree with you that it isn’t perfect, but it isn’t designed to be. What the system represents mathematically, is economic evolution. By allowing the strong to survive and the weak to fail, the human condition averages to a much higher level of functionality. When we don’t allow the weak to fail, out of compassion and fairness or whatever, we doom both they and humanity to a lower average level of function. Unfortunately, economic output is a much more sensitive system than the ocean moderated climate, and small changes in “fairness” result in large changes in average economic function. Now of course there is a balance, and I’m not saying there shouldn’t be safety nets for the truly helpless but that is something very different than sending money to non-productive dysfunctional societies, and people, to help with some unmeasurable aspect of global warming.
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It is an oxymoron to believe in evolution, yet not understand free markets.
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So no, I don’t suffer from the delusion that we don’t make mistakes. I do suffer from the belief that we need to be forced to reach higher through the danger of poverty such that we continue to try and then make even more mistakes. We need a world which allows us to continue to grow economically, producing even more goods and services at an ever more effective rate. We most certainly do not need a world of limited economy and heavy central control of our behavior. Remember, it was free people with minimal regulation who produced the cleanest economies on earth with the greatest wealth for even our failing poor. While these are political views, I hold them as observationally sound.
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So moving on, reclassifying CO2 as a significant pollutant is unscientific at this point but if we assume that is the case, it is an entirely separate issue from whether we need massive regulation and limitation of our behavior as the “solution”. I can imagine many “solutions” which don’t fit your preferred and highly political list.
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You made an interesting point that deserves a slightly different viewpoint and will segue into the now long-awaited conclusion.
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“But there is not one National Academy of Science anywhere in the world with a position against it. “

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You interpret this correlation as though it were evidence of scientific accuracy, yet again, observational evidence contradicts this position. There are almost zero people on these science foundations who can be described as capitalist, pro-growth, limited government or free-market supporters. It is rather apparent that these groups are self-sorting to a high degree by selection and support of like-minded people. This is no big conspiracy, just a generally greater reward for like minded conclusions. Again, I find that pro-government thinkers fail to grasp or perhaps to openly state them, the powerful effect of group incentivization. e.g. Jones invites Mann to speak instead of Spencer.

Your evidence of accuracy, is very obviously — the opposite. Hell, you and I would probably have disagreements about the color of the sky, yet somehow these people across the globe all are in agreement about a science where the scientifically predictive climate models HAVE STATISTICALLY FAILED??!! Future climate isn’t settled knowledge. Your position that the correlation of message appears to represent scientific accuracy, simply doesn’t make rational sense.
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So I would suggest that my argument on AGW is scientific, and is superior in accuracy to your own argument as presented here. My position on AGW is different than the politically motivated, generally exaggerated, and now unscientific global warming story given by National Science academies around the world. Those scientific arguments I make are separate from solutions to energy production, on which my opinions are also scientifically based and all of that is separate from my political views, which I hold as unscientific observationally based opinion.
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So you asked:
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“So who is more likely to be biased Jeff. Someone who is able to accept the implications of what AGW means, as highlighted in my list? Or someone who finds it deeply disturbing to accept that list?”
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I must answer that since the list you present is highly political, a person who represents it as “requirement” for a solution to the general human condition, while failing to recognize obvious alternative paths, is far more likely to be biased than someone who disagrees with the proposed political solution but represents the disagreement as politics.

Add in the fact that the alleged “problem” has not been observed and well.. you get the point.

The IPCC released their “synthesis report” today. The long awaited conclusion to their massive multi-hundred billion dollar industry’s belief that they need to keep getting paid. I have listed the authors from the front page. Take a few minutes and look up some of the names on this list, copy their resume’s into the comments below. Anecdotes are appreciated. My contention is that AGW is an industry, alarm is their product, their personal pay depends on more study and extreme conclusions. Without yet checking, I believe that nobody on this list is conservative or moderate politically and the message is uniformly more government, more tax and more study. If you find anyone moderate in the list, please add it to the comments.

SpaceX is an amazing story. We are witnessing space history being made in front of our eyes. No less important than Columbus style ocean crossings, I do wonder if the public is even aware of it. I am an aeronautical engineer and an entrepreneur myself, I see these things going on and am fascinated by the common sense approach SpaceX has taken. I wrote after their first successful flight that SpaceX won’t lose another craft, I don’t expect any near-future rocket failures even though they expect them. Someday it will happen, but my guess is that it will be the safest and more importantly lowest cost rocket system for the foreseeable future.

Recently they have completed two successful soft landings on the ocean surface. The press has responded by mis-reporting the event as though these were failures with comments about the rocket “tipping over” and breaking up. The reports miss the rather obvious point that the rocket is standing on liquid at that point and has few options other than “tipping over”. They also miss the point that when a 14 story building tips over, it tends to rather dramatically “Break up”. It leaves one wondering just what these reporters imagine might happen had the launch gone perfectly.???

Perhaps in reporter land, a fleet of rubber ducks would extend from the bottom and carry the booster to some white-sand beach and deliver it salt water free to its heavenly creator with none of the evil hydrocarbon fuel dripping into the water…. Is Musk the heavenly creator they imagine, hell no, but is he getting it done, hell yes.

Politicians have resisted the organization for political reasons, bloated government contracts have been awarded to their competitors, yet they continue to penetrate the industry at a rapid pace. They are completely unstoppable, largely due to the capitalist idea of making money, and the entrepreneurial concept of simplicity. If they go public I’m throwing a pile their way simply because it is the future we are looking at. The actual future of humanity.

Standing a pencil end up is hard on your fingertip, yet that is what they are doing in a vertical rocket landing. They have already repeatedly demonstrated rather difficult resupply and return of materials from the ISS — for a fractional cost of the space shuttle. The big space companies are just beginning to react, but they are nothing more than government bloated organizations with public owners. They have no realistic hope of changing sufficiently to compete in any substantial manner. Full of frustrated engineers who know it can be done better and managers who’s vision is trumped by massive process, these competitors are doomed to lose badly before a big corporate reset happens.

I just want to say thanks to Mr. Musk for the fireworks show we get to watch for the second half of my life. It should be great!

Glenn Tamblyn left a reasonable sounding comment on the previous thread in reply to my comment that I find oceans to be very dangerous to human life in general. My point is that oceans are very cold and very large heat sinks and that makes them powerful moderators of temperature. Earth normally exists in an ice age, and we are lucky to be born in this particular time of warmth and comfort. Of all natural disasters that WILL befall Earth, the coming ice age is the one I worry about most. As I wrote, Glenn’s reply sounds like it is reasonable and I think it represents how much of the AGW concerned population thinks.

I’ve copied his comment below and will attempt to present my side of the argument after that. Hopefully, some will find it interesting.

Glenn Tamblyn said

“the real monster we should be worried about is that giant body of extremely cold water that dominates our planet”

Let me put some context to that comment.

Human energy consumption is at a rate of around 17 trillion watts.
Total geothermal energy flows from within the earth at around 44 trillion watts.
Total energy accumulation in the oceans, measured by the ARGO system, is currently at around 250 trillion watts.
Total energy arriving from the Sun, after allowing for albedo is around 121,826 trillion watts.

If the energy from the sun could not be radiated out to space and all instead remained and accumulated here then result would be enough to:

– Boil Sydney Harbour dry in 12 seconds.
– Boil the oceans away in around 900 years
– Melt the entire Earth’s crust in 5,000 to 10,000 years.

Obviously that energy can escape to space. But there is still a restriction on that flow in the form of the GH effect. So I would have though that anything that involves adjusting the control valve regulating that outflow is something we would want to be very conservative about.

That 250 trillion watts accumulating in the oceans, obviously isn’t coming from anywhere here on earth; there is no energy source big enough to supply it.

And the world hasn’t stopped warming. There is still at least 250 trillion watts worth of warming. And if all that energy that is currently going into the oceans had all gone into the air instead, air temperatures would be rising at 15 C/decade. If the Earth were a desert world, with only very, very shallow seas and not huge oceans there would be absolutely no question mark about the impact of CO2 – its effect would be blatant and immediate.

Are you really that confident that the oceans are the thing we should be so worried about?

Glenn, science is all about magnitudes as you know, so I need to restate the point that CO2 in the amounts we humans can release can only slow radiation to space by some finite amount, and heat still radiates from Earth at the same rate it comes in at no matter how much CO2 you add. My point is that the oceans are such a large sink of heat that even all those trillions of watts alleged to be received by global warming they are barely detectable with our best instrumentation. We can discuss what would happen to air if the ocean were not there, but the oceans are there, and they are not going anywhere.

Someone left a comment here a couple of weeks ago about the oceans collecting the heat and then releasing it in the future with a vengeance. While Glenn is not making that claim, I want to make the point that once the relatively small amount of heat is distributed into the ocean heat basin, it is functionally permanently lost with respect to atmospheric warming per thermodynamic laws. The only caveat being that the ocean surface has less heat content so so it can warm measurably and is returned to the atmosphere. In thermodynamics, we know that heat only flows from hot to cold and entropy doesn’t allow us to pick only the hot molecules from the ocean so there is no hot water in the oceans waiting to cook us by surprise in the future.

There is no giant ball of heat waiting for us below the surface, in fact, we have the opposite problem. –A giant ball of cold.

I wrote a post on this a long time ago. I did a quick calculation and plot of ocean heat content and atmospheric heat content. I found the ocean had approximately 1000 times the heat capacity of the atmosphere. If we mixed 1 degree of atmospheric warming into the whole of the ocean, it would result in 0.001 degrees of ocean temperature rise.

Click to enlarge

The only reason we have seen any temperature change on Earth is because the ocean surface warmed a little. In fact, the measured ocean surface makes up most of the measurement in global average temperature. I found this cool plot of ocean temperatures on line:

I’m not sure where the reference is for it but it gives a very nice visual of a typical slice through the ocean. Note the large area of blue-purple indicating the majority of the worlds oceans consist of waters below 5 degrees Celcius. That is really cold water folks and it is a LOT of it. If it were to come to the surface at a faster rate than we have seen, even by a little, the changes to global temperature would be extreme.

This body of water is a huge moderator of our climate and all of the global warming we can imagine isn’t going to warm it up much, because despite Glenn’s scary language, the magnitude of CO2 based warming simply isn’t sufficient. Glenn uses the number 250 trillion watts for total energy accumulation rate. I found the same number at climate progress, a widely known extremist left-wing propaganda outlet that should not be trusted by any thinking person, but we will use it uncritically here. Two hundred fifty trillion is 2.5 x10^14 J/second. If we have a heat capacity of 5.6×10^24 J/K we get 2.24×10^11 seconds until the ocean were warmed one degree. That corresponds to 710 years of heating to increase the ocean volumetric temperature by one degree which is still somewhere around zero C average temperature. In other words, climate progresses unrealistic worst possible case doom scenario’s are not sufficient to significantly affect oceanic heat content.

No I am not claiming the ocean is well mixed but that reservoir is definitely there and only a small change in circulation can bring that monstrous body of energy sinking power those few hundred meters to the surface and eliminate even a thousand years of worst case global warming imagination.

I am claiming though that the oceanic driven cold spell — will happen. We call them ice ages, they are coming again and currently we do not have the power to stop them. The cold is sitting right there off our shores, for anyone to see and measure. It’s not an imagined monster or a projected monster like global warming, it is a real monster, as real as the next big asteroid impact or supervolcano that we all know must come again.

Glenn also writes a hypothetical situation as to what would happen if the Sun’s energy could not be radiated into space. While this leads to some amusing alarmist style talking points, the bottom line is that we would die. That’s it. Nice and simple. Fortunately, our planet remains in a general energy balance that shifts very little over even millions of years of time. This is due to the laws of physics so there is no danger whatsoever that it will suddenly or gradually stop radiating to space – so I hope Glenn and other readers won’t worry about that anymore. :D

To finalize my comments, I would point out to Glenn that climate models have beyond scientific question statistically failed in their projections of temperatures. The sensitivity atmospheric temperature to CO2 from measured data, is therefore much lower than was predicted and that includes the argo data. Alternatively rather than a CO2 sensitivity misjudgement, all that heat that Dr. Trenberth is famously looking for, very well could be sitting in the deep ocean making too little impact over 100 years to actually measure and all it would take is a tiny bit more (or less) oceanic intermixing than models predict for that huge heatsink to be the true source of measured climate change. It could potentiall have overwhelmed the CO2 effect without our knowing. If it were intermixing less on a short term scale, the extra wattage the Argo floats picked up would mean even less of the energy from CO2 than the best observationally based sensitivity calculations indicate. One should not assume uncritically that the energy all came from CO2 based warming. The best evidence we have however shows about the atmosphere increases 1.3 C per doubling of CO2 concentration, and that is very low.

So yes Glenn, I am very sure that with respect to climate, oceans are what we should be concerned about. They are very cold and too large for us to heat up to livable levels by CO2 emissions. So in the future, I hope you won’t concern yourself anymore about harbors boiling, sheep shrinking, extra hurricanes etc.. None of that is real, it is just propaganda which exists in the minds of alarmists.

Ice ages however….are real.

Whether you are liberal or conservative, the economy IS real too and we can all agree that from many examples around the globe, economies have shown a great deal of sensitivity to human meddling. Costs of doing business include taxation, and a wide variety of barriers to operations. It is also really obvious that shutting down coal plants and preventing replacement with functional energy generation is more than a little stupid. We must be more careful in these times of high governmental economic load not commit economic suicide simply out of fear of CO2, which appears to be somewhere between a complete non-issue and an overall benefit to life on Earth. Yet that is exactly what the anti-industrial environmental movement is trying to do.

In the middle of climate model failure, the socialist party of the UN is getting close to a global agreement for cap and trade emissions costs. A pure mechanism to assign value to something with no inherent cost. The dollars per unit they will assign will be related to popular politics rather than anything physical, the failed climate models will be ignored, the damage to industry that was their actual goal can be carried out at will.

Imagine futures trading and how it can be gamed by a politician with the right clout. Hey buddy, we are going to announce X this spring, buy/sell. There is no “performance” metric that controls the result and no insider trading law preventing the comment. Imagine the amount of money which can be stolen from the production centers (industry) that feed the globe. Huge new costs resisting their output of product in favor of the multinational corporations who can influence policy. The same multi-national companies the socialists claim to hate, they empower willingly. For the same ends, as money and power drive them, although the unwitting population seems to follow without notice. Why is it that these companies are so willing to join? Are they stupid or are they interested in improving profits? Why are so many voters unable to think logically?

Subjugation, starvation and poverty will be the future of the human race, for they are as blind to the dangers as a mouse stepping into a mousetrap.

And the scientific predictions of global doom failed…but this wasn’t really about science.

Doug Cotton has been dropping comments here for a couple of years now. Like many skeptic blogs, the threads become polluted with his unusual brand of CO2 based climate change denial. His argument has changed dramatically over the years but in fairness (or perhaps unfairness) to him, he says it has not. Now I think I have been more patient here than any other blog with his unusual proclamations but have been forced to snip many of his recent comment. Doug has even surpassed me as the most snipped commenter here and while I was well ahead of other readers he leaves me running a distant second.

I have spent a few days this week asking and Doug has spent time answering questions about his theory. Currently, he has talked himself into a very tight corner with respect to his CO2 doesn’t cause warming theory. In fact, it seems pretty clear to me that he has disproven his own theory but we are awaiting an answer. I decided to put it here because the old thread was way too long.

We are considering two planets with equal albedo. Both planets are dry and one has a non-absorbing Nitrogen (N2) atmosphere, the other has an absorbing Carbon Dioxide (CO2) atmosphere. They experience the same solar input and all other features are the same. Doug has proclaimed the truth of Loschmidt’s temperature gradient which matches the dry adiabatic lapse rate so we agree in the existence of the gradient, he has agreed that the planets each emit at the same temperature when viewed from space, and he admits that the average emission altitude of the CO2 planet is higher than the ground level emission of our Nitrogen planet.

If the atmosphere is cooler as we go higher in altitude, and the emission temperatures of both are the same yet the average emission altitude of the CO2 planet is non-zero, then the ground temperature of the CO2 planet must be warmer than the N2 planet – global warming theory is proven. Doug doesn’t seem to yet realize just how much of a pickle he has gotten himself into and at the time of writing this post he has gone offline for the night (in his area) but when he comes back, I anticipate he will explain how his theory can correct these statements such that his theory is not proven wrong.

I did not expect his admission of the above points as they completely disprove his conclusion that CO2 does not cause warming. He must rectify the conflict in his reasoning or concede the point.

So much of the IPCC argument is based on uncertainty. Nic Lewis has been working rather tirelessly on improving climate science’s understanding of the observation based magnitude of warming from CO2. This time he teamed up with Judith Curry and published a new paper establishing a far tighter uncertainty range for climate sensitivity to CO2 based warming. The answers they show are substantially lower than the IPCC model based estimates and in my opinion substantially more credible. See Nic’s article describing their results at climate audit here.